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Nomenclator ought to be the work of a first-rate botanist ; and all the 

 knowledge which such a botanist could bring to the task, would still 

 fail to render his undertaking perfectly complete and free from error. 



A local Nomenclator, or one restricted to the plants of a single 

 country, differs only in extent from the general one. There should 

 still be equal facility in use and reference ; and we might fairly expect 

 a greater degree of completeness and freedom from error, within its 

 much narrower scope. We cannot, indeed, say that only a first-rate 

 general botanist should undertake this much more limited work. But 

 we may still say that its author ought to posses a first-rate knowledge 

 of the plants of the single country, and that he should be familiarly 

 acquainted with the works in which they are described, or in which 

 their habitats are recorded. Without such full knowledge and famili- 

 arity, he would be unable correctly to identify the synonyms, and to 

 rectify the misnomers of other authors. The compiler of a local No- 

 menclator ought to be qualified to supply the omissions and to cor- 

 rect the errors of a general Nomenclator, such as that of Steudel, so far 

 as the species and the authors of his own single country are con- 

 cerned. 



Allowing this view to be sound, it would have required a Wilson 

 or a Leighton, a Borrer ora Babington, to have executed such a com- 

 pilation of synonyms properly, and to have made it critically accu- 

 rate and complete. Our surprise, therefore, was great to find the task 

 undertaken by Mr. Ibbotson. We believe this gentleman to be a 

 botanist of good abilities, possessing a considerable knowledge of 

 English plants, and to be very useful in his own familiar sphere of 

 action. Still, we cannot regard him as rising to the same level with 

 those whom we should deem fairly qualified for the special task which 

 he has thus undertaken ; namely, compiling a local Nomenclator, or 

 Catalogue of British plants and their synonyms. With so many Floras 

 and Catalogues already before the public, it is doubtless a very easy 

 task to copy out or compile a list of British plants. But to make a 

 critical compilation of synonyms, even were it restricted to those of 

 British authors only, would be no facile task; and the labour is vastly 

 augmented by including the synonyms of foreign botanists also. 



Mr. Ibbotson's work is simply a list of British plants, arranged ac- 

 cording to the natural method, with numerous synonyms printed in a 

 smaller type, underneath the names of the species to which they be- 

 long, or are supposed to do so by Mr. Ibbotson. No distinction is 

 made between native and naturalised species ; nor even between those 

 which have been erroneously reported as British and those which are 



